Disclaimer: I do not own Percy Jackson. Do I look/write like Uncle Rick? No. Anyways, please review3
Everything was going well until the gryphon showed up.
Chiron had let me go to a concert for my birthday. Seventeen. I'd made it through seventeen years of monsters. I had chosen to go the Brooklyn Bowl, where a local band was playing. What I wasn't expecting there was a monster.
The band was sick. They played a mixture of covers and their own music. The lead singer was really pretty. Tall, tan, and blonde. After the last set was played, I went to find a back exit. I ended up walking backstage. Nobody seemed to notice. Then I saw it. The gryphon. It had a bloody maw. The blonde was there. I watched as she slashed it with... Celestial Bronze? How did a mortal get that? Or was she a mortal...
After the monster had been disspelled, she caught me staring. She marched boldly up to me. Pushing me against a wall, she hissed in my ear. "Did you see it?" I continued to stare. "Wh-what? Who are you?" She continued to whisper in my ear. "Emma Ross. Now did you see it or not?" "Yeah. But what are you doing?" I asked as she traced my jawline with her fingers. "Saving you. If I wasn't doing this, you'd be thrown out. Now keep calm." I was confused, not freaking out. Emma had to be a demigod. There's no way she could have handled celestial bronze that expertly if she wasn't.
"Listen. I need you to come with me. I can make the monsters go away, you just need to come with me." Her pupils were wide. I started to notice the tension in her shoulders, the fear in her eyes, the scars on her arms. I took her hands in mine. "I know a place that's safe. You have to trust me." She laughed nervously. "Trust you? I haven't trusted anyone since..." She trailed off and her eyes filled with sadness. "Anyways. How am I supposed to trust you if I don't even know your name?" I extended my hand. "Benjamin Kingsley. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Now can we leave?" She nodded and showed me an exit. "Can we stop by my apartment?" She asked, acting as though she had just taken a shot of pure espresso. "Sure." I tried to keep my tone calm. "So, Emma, tell me about yourself." She relaxed ever so slightly as we jumped on the train. "Alright. Well, I've never met my father and my mom died a year and a half ago. I live with her best friend. Except, she doesn't live with me. She lives two blocks away. It's too painful for her. It's okay though. She's getting over it. Just like me. It's hard though. Especially since every time I look in a mirror I see her, not me." My face burned in shame as I got off with her. "I'm so sorry. I didn't know." She smiled at me. "It's fine Ben. It helps me remember her." When we stopped in front of her building, I was shocked. It was a beautiful, old brownstone. "Yeah. Let's go in." We stepped onto the gilded staircase, going up to the top floor. "There's an elevator. I just never use it." We stopped in front of a red door. She pulled out a bronze key and inserted it into the lock. The ceiling was at least ten feet high. A grand piano was in a far corner by a window over looking the Williamsburg bridge. Guitars lined the wall. "My dad was a musician. When he left, well, he left these." She must have been a daughter of Apollo. Or a daughter of a Muse, the other half of me thought. The claiming would take care of that. For her sake, I hoped it wouldn't be Apollo. After Apollo's exile, being a child of Apollo couldn't be easy. She led me into her room. The walls were covered in band posters. I watched as she shoved clothes into a bag, and grabbed an iPod from a dock. Next was a pair of Beats that had been drawn on. "So am I allowed to ask where we're going? Or is it a big secret?" Emma said, untacking a poster from her wall and rolling it up and putting it inside her bag. "Montauk. There's a summer camp there with...people like us." Emma slung her backpack over her shoulder and went over to the bookshelf. After pulling a tattered old book from the shelf, her attention shifted to a wooden chest. Pulling out a key from underneath her shirt, she unlocked it. The chest was a small armory. Daggers and throwing stars covered the lining. Two swords, and an axe finished off the collection. "It's not a lot. Social Services confiscated the rest. I knew I never should have hid things in the floor boards." Grabbing two complicated sheaths from behind a painting, she emptied the chest. "Let's go. I hate this place."